


Eternally loved

by ZPumpkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Mild Blood, More characters to come, Spoilers, Swearing, beaujes, ill try to update this as i go, just assume there are spoilers now, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22283263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZPumpkin/pseuds/ZPumpkin
Summary: "We didn't create the consecution," Essek says, casual. "We just perfected it."A soulmate AU, except they have been soulmates before this life, and will be long after.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 36
Kudos: 215





	1. starting again

**Author's Note:**

> thanks fivegoldpieces ( https://fivegoldpieces.tumblr.com/ ) for the idea.

Beau drags herself out of the training ring of the Cobalt Soul, trying to decide if her ribs are bruised or broken; she can breathe, which says bruised, but every step fucking hurts. She uses her staff as a walking stick, breathing carefully, and no one tries to help her. She’s never tried to help them, either, so that’s fair, it makes sense. Instead of going to her bunk and hoping to pass out from pain, Beau turns a corner to go into the archives.

It’s late, the sun so low it doesn’t shine through the windows. There’s only a 2 or 3 people checking on the archive at this point. Beau is very good at avoiding attention, at dodging the obvious spots. At being caught too deep into her crimes. But the worst the Archive could do is cast her out, and she never wanted to be here in the first place, so she slinks through the stacks of books, trying to find something they wouldn’t want her to find.

She finds a collection of journals, their spines so worn they look more like creases. Dragging her finger along each one, feeling the bump and bend, she pauses on one; it’s not large or thin, kinda average as far as journals go. It’s spine is so bent it gives under the slightest pressure, and when she pulls it out it flaps open to a page of words she can’t read. Beau nearly throws it out of frustration. She’s learned a few languages, which is more than most, and this random ass book is outside her understanding. 

Instead of putting it away, finding something else forbidden, Beau starts flipping through the pages. She finds more passages in that language. She also finds sketches of odd things; a crooked looking temple, a towering worm creature, an outline of some army too indistinct to tell race or nation. The ink is soft and blurred from time, but the skill is obvious. Beau keeps turning the pages, trying to guess the point of this book. 

Then she sees an immaculate drawing of two faces. They’re drawn well, but with a different kind of skill, and Beau thinks of the festivals in Kamorda, the artists who’d draw you for a silver. One of the faces is sharp, harsh, with high cheekbones and thin lips. She - she? Beau’s not sure - is looking somewhere to the left, scowling, and something about it - the shading, the careful crease between her eyebrows - briefly captivates Beau. It feels like a friend she’s long forgotten, but Beau’s had so few friends and she can’t recognize this one.

The second face sends a sharp pain through her chest. This face is softer, rounder, so perfectly cheerful in her cheeks and lips, but her eyes have such weight. Beau catches her hand reaching to touch the edge of the cheekbone of a fucking drawing. She curls that hand into a fist and bites on the meat of it. The more she looks at this drawing, the more she wants to rage and scream and run. Instead she bites harder, until hot iron floods her tongue, and she slams the book shut and scrambles to her room.

Beau sleeps, and dreams of gentle fingers curling between her fingers, and she wakes with tears dripping down her face.

No one asks why when she pushes herself to exhaustion and beyond, that day.

-

The first time Beauregard Lionett met Tori was in a seedy bar neither of them had any reason for being in; Beau for being the child of wealth, Tori for being far too skilled to take jobs from such a place. And Beau was Beauregard Lionett, back then, bound and tied to her family, while Tori was just Tori. Only a couple people in the entire crowd remember their meeting, and according to them, it was something like lust at first sight.

What Beau remembers, long afterwards, is seeing Tori cast her head back and laugh, loud and open. She saw the light play over Tori’s face and the careful curl of her hand around a mug. Something inside her twisted, harsh, like a bolt being turned so far it cracks the wood. And in that moment, mildly drunk, the soft candlelight dancing across skin and sweat, all Beau wanted was to know this woman and make her laugh again.

Tori taught her many things. How to slip inside closing doors, how to open closed windows. How to lie and cheat and steal with a smile. How to hone Beau’s hate into a fine point and use it as a weapon. 

Tori did not teach her how to handle the want, the need, of that first night. Her laugh never eased the terrible twisting in Beau’s heart. Her cheeks never felt right under Beau’s fingers and lips.

Beau hates herself for many reasons. Some of them she knows are nonsense, some she might learn to forgive. The one she can never forgive herself for is sitting in her father’s office, him saying that Tori was gone, and the sudden relief that gave her. The sense of freedom.

Tori wasn’t perfect, but she deserved better than that. She deserved better than Beau.

-

It takes months before Beau dares to go searching for that dark corner of the archives. She spends every day swinging her staff, hitting and being hit. She nurses bruises and fractured bones, denying the clerics every time they do their rounds to ask who was hurt. Beau starts cradling her injuries like they were holy, things not to let go, things she had to keep. Once in a while, an elven monk glances over her and makes such a weird face, concern and interest, and Beau walks away as fast as she can.

She couldn’t explain that something deep in her, set in her gut and her ribs, demands she had to hurt and she can't deny it.

One day the injuries and the churning weight get so much she doesn’t know what to do about it. Beau clutches her sternum and walks, carefully, to the archives. She counts her steps until she finds the right row, and counts the books until she finds the right column, counts the height until she finds the right stack. Her hand finds the journal so easily, and as she pulls it out her eyes, blind in the dark, flicker to something else. Beau drops the journal to the side and grabs old parchment. Her grip, normally so hard, softens instinctually, and she takes a bound collection of old paper.

Beau didn’t want to make a light in case someone caught her, but the sudden, terrible need to know drags her to a nearby table. She grabs the lantern and lights it, sets it in front of her collection. She sees the journal, the damned thing that made this her problem, and a bundle of bound and folded letters.

For a long while Beau stares at it, the back of her neck heated and prickling. She wants to touch. She doesn’t want to know. Beau breathes deep and undoes the knot holding the letters. She pulls the top one out and reads it.

‘We’re going to be apart again, soon I think. I heard of the dragon, and I know you can’t help yourself. I wish you could. But you’ll be safe! I believe in you, and everyone at home does too. Just promise you’ll come back when you’re done.’

The signature is smeared but looks like a J-something. The letter has dark spots all over it; either drops of drink or grease or… tears. Beau runs her fingertips, so softly, over the curl of the letters, and a drop of her own tears falls onto the letter. She jerks back and rubs at her eyes, trying to stop herself from crying now that she’s noticed it.

“Hey, Ioun?” Beau says, not too loud in this dark, quiet library. Her voice has gone scratchy and harsh from the weight in her throat but she ignores that. “If this is you sending some kind of fucking message, stop it. Fuck off.” Then she shoves all the pages into their spots and goes back to bed.

-

Beau’s father sends a letter. When it gets to Beau, she knows enough to see that the seal has been cut, delicately, and it has been read before it ever got to her. Who knows how many people have read it. And, sure, that’s what the Cobalt Soul does, they learn and read. This time, they’ve learnt and read Beau’s broken life. They knew about her brother.

That night Beau packs her bags and sneaks out of her room. She tiptoes around the corners she knows the monks focus on. At one point she hops from an open window to avoid a wandering monk, and swings herself down into the first floor. Beau lands amongst the shelves of the library, and after a quick look around she knows exactly where she is.

“If this is your plan to make me a believer, it’s a fucking shit plan,” Beau whispers to Ioun, or no one, probably no one. She grits her teeth, then takes the familiar journal and letters and shoves them into her pack. “I’m stealing this,” she announces, still quiet, “you aren’t giving it to me.” And then she slinks out of the Cobalt Soul. 

Once outside, Beau waits for a moment to feel free, or relieved, or troubled. All she feels is expectant, like the next corner has the thing she’s waiting for. She walks far away from the Soul then looks up into the sky and screams, “FUCK YOU!” Several people look out of windows to shush her and she flips them off. Then she bribes her way out of Zadash and starts running. It doesn’t help.


	2. starting again 2

Jester sits in her room, her blankets pulled up all around her, waiting and hoping her mama has time to visit. She’s not always like this, alone and scared and needing. But sometimes Jester is, and mama helps, even if she doesn’t fix it forever.

This time, the sun is going down. The sight of the ocean going gold and jade with the sunlight, Jester loves it. But something in her burns now; she feels deeply alone, like she has to find someone else to make sure she isn’t the last person alive in the world. 

She could walk outside and see Bluud, or Maryna, or any of the people that work in the Lavish Chateau. She could scream and mama would come running to help her. But they aren’t what she needs, and she doesn’t even know what she needs. So she curls into herself and muffles her sobs.

“Hello,” says a figure, his form blurry but his voice certain. He’s about Jester’s height, wrapped in a green haze. “You seem terribly alone. Would you like a friend?” 

Jester blinks, and blinks again, wipes her eyes. He doesn’t become any more clear. “Uh, yeah. I won’t say no to a friend!” She puts her cheer back on and wipes the tears from her cheeks. “I’m Jester, who are you?”

“Well,” the figure says, and from his tone alone Jester knows he’s smiling. “I’m not sure yet. Maybe you could help me figure it out. And I can help you of course, it should be balanced.”

Jester is young, her memories soft and hazy. Later in life she replaces the figure’s vagueness with the warmth of the Traveler. But in this moment, her terrible loneliness pressing in without any solution, Jester grabs for his hand. He’s ghostly, not real, whatever the right word is, but she tries to grip his hands so hard she bruises her own knuckles.

“We’ll be the best of friends,” Jester tells him.

-

A few years after they met, both of them have grown into the awkward life of the teen years. His voice changes between light and deep, Jester trips over her own legs. 

“All you have to do is imagine someone else,” the Traveler says, “and let me help you.”

They are alone together in Jester’s room. Now, Jester holds a drawing from one of her books in front of her, an elf with such elegance it reminds her of her mama. 

The elf, Arissa, the heroine of her latest favorite book, has such an interesting life. She runs away from home. She finds a valiant warrior to protect her. She has a life of new sights, new places, new people. Jester wants so desperately to be her that she asks the Traveler for help.

He provides.

Jester gathers everything about Arissa she wishes she could be; beautiful, elegant, loved, protected, not alone - she stops thinking then and just shoves the best image of what she wants to her mind and lets the magic flow. It tingles along her skin, soft as feathers.

Opening her eyes, Jester sees someone who is not Arissa. Her cheekbones are high, her brows firmly downturned. She holds up a dark skinned hand, and when she curls her fingers, those fingers close as well. She has no horns, and her hair is short and wildly tangled instead of long and soft. 

“This isn’t what I meant,” Jester says, and even as she says it she walks forward and touches her reflection. It’s so, so easy to trace the curl of the cheekbone of this unfamiliar face. After a moment, Jester tears herself away from the mirror. “I wanted to be Arissa.”

“You make the image,” the Traveler says, “I produce the image. This is what was in your head.” He has no reflection, but she feels the feather-light touch of his hand on her shoulder.

Jester turns back around and places her hand on the mirror, looking at herself. Same red dress, same room. Different face, different skin. “Who is this?” she asks, and when the reflection’s lips move she reaches up to touch - finds only glass. She doesn’t know why her heart drops, but she wishes she did.

The Traveler moves in front of her, his image blocking her from seeing the mirror. Even though he doesn’t reflect. It’s weird, but she kinda likes weird. “Whoever they are, we’ll find them, my Jester.” He steps away as Jester feels the spider-leg tickle of the magic leaving her skin. In the mirror she sees herself, blue and horned and… crying? She wipes at her cheeks.

“Promise?” Jester asks, pushing the rough and unknown sorrow out of her voice.

“Always,” the Traveler says, his tone as mirthful and teasing as it has always been.

-

Jester has a corner in the Chateau. She found it years ago while she wandered around the top levels, and started carving into it before mama noticed. Mama just smiled and told Bluud to find some construction workers to fix it up for her Sapphire. 

Now, Jester sneaks into her private little corner every day she can. She curls herself into the tightest corner and pushes her ear into the wall to listen. There’s a lot Jester hears, there. Diplomats muttering over wine, nobles bragging to each other, the rustle of the guards’ armor. 

Every night she listens for mama’s voice, waiting as impatiently as anyone can wait. This night, mama told Jester she has something special prepared, so Jester is nearly melded to the wall.

Jester hears a hush roll through the crowd. She hears the herald announce the Ruby. Jester’s horn scrapes against the wood as she tries to listen closer. 

Mama’s singing is always lovely, her voice echoing but present, divine but earthly. Jester once called her an angel come to Exandria and mama made a weird face and laughed. But it’s true, there is no comparison. Jester listens to her sing with deep delight, her tail curling and curling around itself for lack of contact. 

This song is in Infernal. The cadence should be rough and kind of awful; Jester’s tried to sing in Infernal before and she knows how it sounds. But mama is a wonder, so the words sound distinct instead of harsh. 

Jester listens to a song of long lost loves, bound together but torn apart. They struggle, and fight the many things keeping them apart; monsters and tyrants and simple distance. The song crescendos, the notes high and throaty with their earnestness. Mama sings of the reunion, the reconnection, the return of love.

As the song ends, the crowd claps so loud the walls of Jester’s corner vibrate. Jester tries to clap as well, softly of course, but her hands shake. She blinks and something wet drips down her cheeks. She’s crying.

Jester scrambles out of her corner, back to her room, and scrubs her face raw to clear the evidence. If she cries, mama feels bad, even if it’s not her fault. She doesn’t even know why she’s crying. Her eyes sting, her throat feels tight, her heart is pounding, but none of that is mama’s fault, so Jester breathes deeply until she feels okay. Then she goes to praise mama about her performance.

In the corner of her eye, the Traveler watches, and his usually smiling mouth is in a contemplative twist this time.

-

In retrospect, the end of Jester’s happy life is so simple, so quick.

She pranks a haughty man into wearing a brassiere. She gets him to go onto the balcony and she locks the door. The next day, mama comes into her room pale-faced and urging Jester to pack. An hour later she is outside the Chateau, on her own, with everything she can carry in a backpack.

In reality, it was the worst 27 hours of her life. She panics and cries and apologizes and cries again, and swears she’ll be safe. She also promises she’ll come back to mama, but now she think she might have been lying. At the end of the day she stands in the streets and, barely, remembers to disguise herself as some random human woman she spots (she has never felt strong enough to repeat that first face she put on). 

Jester stands there for a long while, the shouts of fishmongers and stallkeepers ringing in her ears. Her heart is beating so fast. Unfamiliar heat crawls up her spine and burns in her eyes. She wants to cry all over again.

She puts on a smile, pulls out her journal, and writes, ‘This is the start of Jester Lavorre’s adventure!’ She holds her pen over the next line. Nothing comes to mind. Jester shuts it and walks forward and almost immediately bumps into someone.

“Ah, sorry miss,” the half-orc says.

Jester keeps her smile. “No problem! Hey, do you know anyone leaving Nicodranus anytime soon? I have to be on my way kinda quickly.”

The half-orc looks her over, top to bottom, and Jester immediately thinks of the heroes in her romances, the careful glances. He scratches his chin. “I suppose I am, if you’re willing to trust any old person on the street. Ah, also, name’s Fjord.” He sticks his hand out, and smiles, and it’s both a fake and real smile. Weird. “If we’re going to travel together, otherwise, I’d recommend the front gates for a caravan or something.”

Jester scrambles to take and shake his hand. “No! No, I think 2 people is better than a whole lot.” A pause, Fjord looking expectant. “Oh! I’m Jester. Pleasure to meet you!” Jester curtsies, like mama taught her to. 

“Well then, anything to do here, or can we go?” Fjord asks.

Jester looks over her shoulder. To the Chateau, with everyone she has ever known wishing her the best. To the docks she’s always wanted to walk along. She looks at Fjord and something in her twists away, unhappy for some reason. But she’s not alone on this adventure, she should be happy!

“Nah, let’s go!” Jester says, and she keeps her smile on. It almost feels honest.


	3. starting again 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wish i could do some soft beau content after the last weeks, but this story isnt there.

A couple days away from Zadash, Beau sits by a campfire she’s made out of damp sticks and patches of burnt grass. The smoke is so thick she can’t even sit close enough to warm herself. Her clothes have gone tacky, stiff after her hurried journey and she can feel the itch in her eyes from restless nights watching her own back.

In short, she is miserable and the familiarity of that is a comfort in itself. Bruises, blood, and baggage, thats Beau. She snorts at herself and chucks a handful of leaves onto her sad little fire.

The stolen journal is a weighty presence in her pack, even though the pack is not on her shoulders right now. The pages are dry, and paper burns so well. But Beau is nosy, and she tells herself there is someone else’s mystery in there. This doesn’t really help explain the many times she’s held it in her hands, unopened, running her thumb over the leather.

The storm that chased her out of Zadash is gone now. The night is empty, she’s burnt through her anger for the moment, and she is so, so bored. There aren’t many excuses she can make to not go prying. She pulls the journal out and forces the pages open at random - a passage in that language she can’t fucking read. She hisses, turns a dozen more to a drawing of some market square. She doesn’t recognize it, turns again, nothing useful, turn, turn, turn, skip, turn.

Beau stops and looks at her hands, and makes to turn back a page; she gets a peek of a face, a cheekbone, and knows immediately which page this is. She slams the journal shut.

“Well, fuck you too, then,” she tells the book.

-

Trostenwald does not rise to meet her, it slouches forward in low huts and shacks. Old, bent-backed farmhands eye Beau as she struts down the dirt road. In the distance she can see the larger houses and businesses, made with painted lumber and stone instead of rocks and damp driftwood.

The stark difference reminds her terribly of Kamordah, and the face she makes then is enough to scare a few sets of eyes into looking conspicuously away from her. 

Still, towns like this know how important a good drink is. She can appreciate that. She wanders until she finds an inn, pushes past everyone and walks up to the bar, and orders shots.

The barmaid looks Beau up and down, week old makeup to filthy robes. “That’s 2 silver,” she says.

Beau takes out her 2 gold. “And… how much for a room?”

“5 silver, per night.” The barmaid starts cleaning glasses, apparently done with Beau. “Meal’s a silver, as well.”

“Shit.”

“I get that a lot.”

Beau should know better. She does in fact know exactly how far she could get on her gold if she budgets it right. She spends the silver for her whiskeys anyways and downs them, quick and burning.

“Know where I can get some work?” Beau asks.

-

Work, in a town like Trostenwald, comes in 2 varieties: cleaning shit, or lifting shit. Hardly the start to her new life Beau wants. She pulls back a few of the newer postings on the workboard to see if any of the older stuff is more interesting. It’s more of the same, really.

Still, manual labor has plenty of chances to lift a few things to sell later. The quicker she gets out of this place, the better.

Funny, considering she has no destination in mind, but she’s never had one before. Not a real one, anyways.

“Hi! Excuse me, can we see the board, thanks!” says a bright voice, and a tiefling shunts Beau out of the way.

“The fuck?”

Another voice, drawling, says, “Sorry about that, she’s… excitable.” The half-orc lifts his brows in a way that implies Beau knows what that really means. Beau bristles at the sudden familiarity he’s giving her. To the tiefling, he says, “Jester, you ought to apologize to the young woman.”

Beau is ready to snap at both of them; she’s not had enough whiskey to dull the sharpness inside her. She’s ready to scrape away the brightness of this pushy girl’s voice until they leave her in peace.

The tiefling, Jester, turns and smiles. Her mouth opens to speak. Their eyes lock. Beau’s throat goes tight and hot, and Jester just stands there like she’s waiting for her queue.

That’s all it is, that moment. Beau stares at Jester and she stares back. It’s nothing, they just met, but suddenly Beau is ready for nothing, might never be ready for anything ever again and she doesn’t fucking know why.

Her heart pauses then beats once, so loud it rattles her ribs.

“Jester?” the half-orc asks, leaning into this quiet, strange bubble Jester’s pulled them both into. 

“Right! Right, yes, I’m sorry I pushed you,” Jester says. She blinks and looks around, humming to herself. “Do you live here?” she asks Beau.

“Uh, no. Fuck no, I’m just passing through,” Beau answers in complete honesty and bites her cheek after it. What the hells is going on?

“Then maybe we could team up for a bit!” Jester says.

The half-orc coughs into his fist. “You know we just met her?”

“So? I sorta just met you,” Jester laughs, grabs him, pulls him to her side and waves her hand in a ta-da motion. “I’m Jester, and this is Fjord!”

Beau looks between the 2 of them. Fjord’s rubbing at the corner of his eye, looking exasperated but accepting of whatever is happening. Jester beams, bright and kind, like nothing has ever gone wrong in the entire history of the world.

Fjord coughs again and raises a brow.

“Oh, Beau,” Beau says. “Just Beau.”

Jester claps once and spins on her heel to look at the workboard. “Okay, just Beau. How do you feel about lifting boxes? Cause I’m really strong, and I bet Fjord is too, but you look really, really strong. It should be easy!”

Beau nods along, feeling lost, out of control of her own body.

-

They spend hours loading a wagon for a couple judgmental asshole guards working for one of the rich beer families. It is not easy work, all of the barrels have liquid weight that sloshes. And Fjord, it turns out, isn’t all that strong. Jester ends up doing most of the heavy lifting, which is maybe why, when she asks if they can stick around to play cards with the assholes, Beau nods.

That loses them most of their pay, even though no one sees Jester sneak cards into her sleeves. It turns out she just sucks at card games, even when she cheats. And, hey, she cheats, that’s interesting. Maybe they could actually get along, once Jester’s not in charge of their money.

Still, they’re back to poor, it’s late. And maybe it’s the hunger, the exhaustion, or the lightness of her purse; a farmer screams for someone to help his daughter. Jester tells them they’re going to help him, and, despite everything she knows, Beau nods.

They end up fighting a snake longer than the 3 of them combined are tall. The snake crushes and bites everybody near it. There’s a little girl screaming her head off while her father tries to coax her far, far away.

Still, it’s the most fun Beau’s had all day, sloshing in the murky lake water, trying to give it a concussion just to see if she can. She has no fucking idea how to fight a snake, which is a serious shortcoming of the monks. But Fjord and Jester have magic, which is helpful. Means no one gets in the way of her footwork. She’s almost laughing as she punches the snakes underbelly and feels multiple bones crack.

But Jester has its attention, and it slithers right by Beau to bite down on the tiefling’s shoulder. She makes an odd, gasping noise and falls down. The snake goes in to eat Jester. Beau runs through the mud to slam its head; her staff nearly breaks, the vibration runs through her whole body. It turns, hisses as Fjord’s next blast break its jaw. Beau grabs the loose bone and rips until the snake gurgles, dies.

Then she stares at Jester, half under the water, until Fjord pours a potion in her mouth. Jester breathes, starts coughing.

Beau remembers to breathe herself, then. She falls on her ass beside Jester, cradling her own bite wounds. “Holy shit,” she mutters.

“We won!” Jester cheers, then whimpers. “Okay, ow. Ow.” She sits upright and picks mud off her dress, catching her breath. “Are you okay, Beau?”

“Hm? Yeah, I’m fine,” Beau lies, and it’s almost a relief that she can still lie on command when she’s been off her game this whole day. Jester frowns and leans forward with glowing hands and Beau pushes away. “No, really, I’m fine, I wasn’t the one about to be eaten.”

“Okaaay,” Jester says, and closes up her own wounds. “Fjord?”

“I’m doing decent, just a few scratches.” He joins them in the mud and blood, watching the snake’s corpse bob in the gentle waves. “I gotta say, we do make a good team.”

“Totally,” Jester says. 

There is a long moment, nothing said, and Beau fiddles with her sash. She wants to run, but she doesn’t want to leave, so instead she waits for someone else to break this careful pause. To tell her they don’t need her anymore. Pay her and go away.

Jester speaks first. “Well, I’m very tired, and I think we have enough money to get 2 rooms. So, Beau, you wanna be roomies?” This time, maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s that the sun is truly set now. Maybe it’s the easy trust made when you fight for your life alongside someone. Maybe it’s Jester’s smile, soft, hoping, nervous.

Whatever it is - a cheaper room for the night, that’s it - Beau nods along.

They get their rooms, with barely a silver between them. Beau lies in her bed, staring into the dark. She’s going to stop nodding along, she decides. Jester murmurs in her sleep, so very close. Beau’s going to stop agreeing so easily to Jester, it’s only going to end badly. This is the last time.

-

In the morning there are strangers, a filthy man and a too-loud goblin woman, eying the pile of copper and silver the grateful farmer gives them.

In the morning an ostentatious purple tiefling and a towering woman invite them to a circus.

Beau glares at all of them, suspicion curling through her head; she sees thieves and liars and potential dangers for her group - she stumbles over her own thoughts. She tries to figure out when Fjord and Jester became her group. When she became part of a we.

Maybe it’s that distracting, off-putting moment of introspection. Maybe it’s wanting to see this Yasha in action. Jester says, “Guys, we should go! It sounds so cool!”

Beau nods along, even as she curses herself for it.


	4. knots and tangles

It’s midnight, and Jester spends an hour trying to clean sewer grime from her boots, but it’s clumped and sticky in that terrible way much too old oranges are, smells even worse than the oranges too. The soot is easier, it’s just ash, but Jester sort of knew who the ash used to be so she rushes through it. When her nails tear through a section of her cape she winces, throws it to the side of the room, and slumps into her bed.

Today - yesterday? - had started so well: helping rebellions, sneaking into estates, planting evidence. It all seemed so exciting in a way that wouldn’t be mostly from the adrenaline of trying not to die, again. A neat little crime story, but she got to be the criminal, and how had she never thought to try that before?

Then again, she’s still wanted in Nicodranus.

But now the air of Zadash is heavy with smoke and shouts. The rattle and clank of armored guards outside keeps jolting her. The once intriguing hum of mystery from the strange stone thing now comes too close to the whine of the tower exploding, or the whistle of guards coming for her.

There’s a too close rustle of fabric and Jester locks in place until she remembers Beau; just Beau in the other bed, shifting and shifting to get comfortable.

In the grey-light of her darkvision, Jester marks the barely healed curve of a slash over Beau’s shoulder, winces as Beau turns, puts pressure on it and hisses.

When the drow’s magical darkness faded and revealed Beau collapsed and bleeding, that panic had burned - still burns. Jester’s the healer, no one says it anymore but they all know. She can’t heal what she can’t see, though. Another few seconds in that darkness, another slash from that drow; it’s not hard to imagine, even though it hurts.

She doesn’t mean to, but she whispers, “Beau?”

A groan, and a rustle of bedsheets. “Mh. What?”

“I…” Jester fiddles with her rings, frowns. The tension of tonight has become a worn-thin fabric here, in their room. Too soft, too delicate to survive anymore pressure. Instead, Jester says, “Is it always this bad in the Empire?”

Beau says nothing for awhile, and Jester shrinks into herself, resigns herself to a bad night’s sleep. Then Beau grunts and pushes herself up on her elbows to squint in the dark at Jester. “You couldn’t have asked an easy question at go the fuck to sleep o’clock?”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine, just.” Beau twists her mouth, her face so much more open in the dark. Or when she forgets Jester can see her just fine. She sees careful thought, Beau’s mouth moving with the start to words, a tension in her jaw. Finally, Beau says, “This is definitely a real fucked up scenario, like, normally thing’s don’t just explode all the time. But, kinda, yeah.”

“It just seems so miserable.”

“That’s the Empire, rules and rules and fuck your life if you break ‘em.”

There’s a rough catch in Beau’s voice as she finishes, and Jester sits up too, tries to scrutinize Beau. “Are you still hurt? I think I can… well, maybe I can do a little more healing?”

“Nah, nah, I’m fine.” Beau stares at Jester, must catch the glow of her eyes because the monk’s face goes flat and smooth in a moment. “Don’t let this shit get to you. It’s nothing.”

“Oh,” Jester says, feeling like she just lost her footing somewhere important, a mountain or a dance or something.

Nothing is said for a long while, and Jester would think Beau’s asleep except it’s too quiet; Beau is as loud in sleep as she is awake.

“Can we share the bed, tonight?” Jester asks, blurts, nothing behind it but some old instinct that led her to stare into the horizon on nights the Chateau was too quiet. Looking, asking, for a thing without a name - even the Traveler couldn’t explain it.

Beau doesn’t answer, and she does actually fall asleep almost an hour later. Jester’s awake to hear it, bunching the blankets in her hands.

-

At the first chance she has Jester looks into the dodecahedron. She’d have done it almost instantly but they started working for a crime lord, so things were a little busy.

Inside it is grey, misty, expands so far beyond sight that it feels like she fell out of the sky, into the places between stars. She sees all of herself, separate, spread out, scattered, wandering through infinite threads. A thousand million Jesters walking a thousand million paths. She tries to watch each path but how, how can she, there’s so much to watch and look at and know and all of it is suddenly in the here and now. She reaches for a Jester close to her and her hand is so far away, miles away from that Jester. She reaches again and the next Jester drifts through her fingers. The more she looks, the more Jester notices that some of the other Jesters aren’t exactly her: short, tall, bulky, slim, horns, no horns. She feels the connection to them all, though; if she slipped and fell into them she’d jump into their skin easy as she could put on a dress.

Careful of herself, of the very idea of herself now in this overwhelming amount of everything, Jester folds in on herself and watches.

Over the next few - minutes? hours? - Jester realizes all of the other hers have a figure walking alongside them. The figure is cloudy, soft-edged, no solid silhouette or impression of what, who they are. She’d call it a shadow but it has its own step and rhythm, different but complimentary. It walks with long steps or short, hurried steps, it swings its arms or with complete stillness, but always in lockstep with the Jester it’s attached to.

In her own space, her own head, Jester looks left and right, all around her own self. She finds no one. The terrible loneliness strikes her, sudden, harsh, and she reaches towards the other hers, clawing for someone else. A grey light comes, instead; a sense of warmth and welcoming and so much more. Jester cups it in her hands and lets it in.

She wakes in her room, the dawn seeping through the windows. The dodeca is between her legs, her hands on its sides. She shakes her head clear, remembers Caleb’s warning, and shoves the item into her pack. Then she sits, listening to Beau snore. Tries to understand that vision.

When Beau awakes, Jester has made no progress on the mystery. Something in her feels powerful, though, and she challenges Beau. Offers to punch the monk.

Beau lights up at the idea, excited, eager even if it’s not quite happy, for the first time in awhile. It’s hard to tell why, exactly. But Jester takes note - Beau responds best to something physical.

-

They ride down the road, the cart jostling with the speed they’re going. They are on a timed job for a kind of intimidating crime boss, which is the obvious reason Molly’s cracking the reigns.

But Jester sees the tense set of his shoulders and his tail lashing - Molly, maybe all of them, are running just as fast away from the war. Which is fine, Jester doesn’t really want to join a war she has no part in. She just wishes she could draw without breaking her pencil on every bump. This is the fourth time she’s had to mend it.

She groans and slumps onto Caleb’s side. Groans again, louder, when he doesn’t look from the inside of the Haversack and the dodeca inside it. How he can concentrate right now, Jester has no idea.

“Caleb,” Jester says when he still doesn’t respond. “Caleb, I’m bored.”

“Read a book,” he says, reaches inside the sack to shift the dodeca to its other side.

“Have you found anything new in there?” Jester asks, only a little interested. “Like, maybe we could make copies of ourselves, or maybe if we shake it enough a baby will pop out?”

“Nein, no, I… what?” Caleb looks at her, and Jester pokes her tongue out. “You are messing with me.”

“I’m bored!” Jester repeats. “Have you already used it today? I wanna see if I can talk to one of the other people.”

“Other people? You mean the other yous?”

Jester flips to the right page in her sketchbook, says, “No, no, the people that are like this.” Shows him the drawing, a Jester with an entirely black figure so close to her side they may well be literally attached at the hip.

Caleb studies it, then looks at her. “That is what you see inside this?” Jester nods. “Interesting. All I see are alternate versions of myself.”

“Really? Oh, what if I’m like, super secretly connected to this thing, like it’s been waiting for me to find it again and somewhere out there is another one and I have to reunite them?”

“… I can not really say that is not possible,” Caleb says. “I barely understand what this is intended to do.”

“You should get Beau to help you, she’s pretty smart. Remember the Gentleman’s code?” Jester’s already up and reaching towards where Beau’s sitting next to Molly in the front. Caleb grabs her sleeve and tugs her back into place. “What?”

Caleb looks at her, eyes flicking to Beau’s back. “I would be careful what secrets you tell her,” he says. “We have only just met, and there is still very little reason we have to trust her.”

“And the others,” Jester adds on. Caleb doesn’t say anything. “But you trust me? You let me keep the thingy. And you trust Nott?” Caleb nods immediately. “But… you don’t trust Beau specifically, or is it everyone else, too?”

“I am careful,” Caleb says. “But Beau, we barely know anything about her. It is impossible to know her true allegiances.”

Jester looks at him, his frown set in stone, and she looks at where Beau makes a lazy attempt to shove Molly off the cart. She can almost see the threads holding this group together like the grey light in the dodeca, sees it tugging taut around Caleb and Beau, sees how it segments and separates as much as it binds them. Sees just how easily this group could fall apart with one too-sharp tug.

Jester swallows and turns her smile back on, flicks Caleb’s shoulder. “Well, I’ll just have to prove you can trust her, and then you’ll have to trust all of us.”

-

The funny thing about threads is how delicate yet cruel they can be. There are still marks on Jester’s fingers from when she tried to learn sewing by herself, slightly darker lines where her fingers were caught in loops that bit almost as sharply as fishing line. A hard tug and she was free, but all her work was torn, ruined. Sometimes she’d be stuck on that choice for so long her mama came in to help pry her fingers loose - and still, the fabric was damaged.

Jester tries to loosen the loops around her friends without untying the whole weave, but she learned the Mending spell for a reason. Equal parts delicacy and strength, Jester is, sometimes too eager in her work to strike a balance.

For awhile she thinks Calianna, sweet and strange, might be enough.

Then Beau yells at Caleb over a bowl and controlling things, and Jester tries to sleep with a throat so dry that it hurts, feels like salt lines her teeth. The next morning is quiet, pressurized, made worse by the fish-people nearly killing all of them.

Fjord shoves an orb into his stomach out of nowhere, which is a thing that just happens? No one knows what to do. Fjord has no answers. The mystery and mistrust builds in new ways, and now Fjord’s being cut off from the rest of them for reasons no one understands.

Jester feels those threads around her neck now, pulling tighter and tighter. It’s only after the horribly, uncomfortably awkward hug in murk and swamp water, that Jester can breathe easy - or, easier, at least. Beau and Caleb have made some kind truce, and everyone chuckles, cheers when the hug finally, thankfully ends. There are knots still pulling taut, impossible tangles keeping them apart, but it seems less like a noose now.

They’ll be okay for a little while longer.

-

Hupperdook, though lacking in mushroom houses, is a blessing. Jester is helpless but to watch when the sky bursts in fire-bright color and explosion, clapping though she’s not sure who she’s clapping for. But she manages to look away, look over her friends. Their eyes shine with the fireworks, the colors swirling over their faces as they watch. Even Caleb watches the explosions with mild enjoyment, his shoulders relaxing. 

Most of them get hilariously drunk, of course. This is apparently one of their major hobbies. Jester wheedles them around, dances with Caleb, steals the piano for an encore that she gets Molly to sing a slurred, off-key accompaniment to. She teases them until they start collapsing, then she leads the ones too gone to walk to their beds. Maybe it’s the drink - it’s definitely the drink, sadly - but the threads are loose around them, letting them into each other’s space at long last.

Jester’s beaming as she shuffles into her bed for the night. She leaves the lantern on for a bit, since Beau should be dead to the world, so she can draw everything she can. 

“Are you gonna be up too much longer?” Beau slurs into her pillow. One eye peeks open, hazy but not as much as Jester expects.

“Oh, no, I can go to sleep whenever. Do you want me to put the light out?”

“Nah. I’ve slept through worse.” Beau shuffles around, shoves her face into the pillow. 

Jester keeps sketching, exaggerates her dance with Caleb, puts Nott triumphant over a table of knocked-out gnomes and dwarves. She pauses, looks over to see Beau squirming to get comfortable.

“This was a really good day,” Jester says.

Beau mumbles into her pillow.

“I’m pretty sure I heard, yes Jester, this was the best day ever, I’m so happy we’re all friends.”

Finally Beau turns over. “It was fun. Good party. Gnomes are fucking wild, man.”

“Even better when you party with people you like?” Jester teases. Asks. They’re all so hard to read; Jester thinks she knows the answer, hopes she does, but she wants to hear it.

Beau’s eyes clear, her face stills. A window slamming shut in sudden wind. Jester keeps smiling until a helpless crooked grin curls across Beau’s face.

“You’re alright,” Beau says quickly and then flips around and pulls the pillow over her head.

-

Something about the Shusters changes them all. The prison break, the reunion, saying goodbye to Kiri; there’s a beautiful, tiny knot in the center of them, connecting them all. Some common, kind thing they create together.

They leave Hupperdook as the fireworks go off, back-lighting the cart in red and gold. They make camp far enough away that the firework’s boom is a distant echoing pop. The stars shine silver, leave dappled greys and blues over the shapes of her sleeping friends. The embers of their fire sparkle amber and ruby, and the last of the creatures preparing for winter scurry, chirp, songbirds and squirrels and rhythmic crickets. 

It’s so much like a storybook moment, one Jester gets to actually live in for once. It eases the lingering loneliness she’s had since she left home - since she saw the second shade in the dodeca.

She spends a long time drawing as much as her pages can hold, so long that when Fjord asks if she wants to walk with him and Yasha she is wide awake still. There’s more she wants to draw, but it can wait for another day. Jester puts everything away and skips to her feet to join them.

-

Threads can be cruel, but iron is worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took far too long, i know. the show keeps throwing me through loops, in my defense.


End file.
